The impact on the toy industry was "revolutionary," says Jonathan Samet, publisher of the trade magazines Toybook and Toy Insider. "The tremendous amount of detail and quality for the price that he offered changed everything," says Samet, who at the time was a marketing manager overseeing action figures for Tyco Toys (now a division of Mattel). "Collectible types of figures had historically sold for $100 or so. He was putting out that type of quality product for $10 to $15."

But it was McFarlane's artistic instincts rather than his business savvy that convinced his vast legions of comic fans to begin buying his action figures. "One of Todd's greatest assets is that he is so in touch with his audience-what he sees as cool, his audience sees as cool," says Jim Salicrup, one of McFarlane's former editors on Spider-Man. "Before his action figures came along, if kids looked at the dinky toys other people made and compared them with superheroes in the comic books, they were a little disappointed."

Soon McFarlane was producing comic-book characters from his friends' books as well. Then McFarlane won a deal with Gene Simmons to produce Kiss action figures-not such a leap, since monsters are a McFarlane specialty. The Kiss line sold out for eight months straight. A line of X-Files figures soon followed.

Nowadays, McFarlane Toys produces 200 to 400 new action figures across 26 different lines every year, ranging from athletes and characters from The Simpsons Movie to rock stars and even army figures.

And McFarlane is still doing deals. Recently, he formed a videogame company with Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and inked an as yet undisclosed deal to make another movie based on one of his comic-book characters with a major Hollywood studio.

Later this month, McFarlane will launch what could eventually become his boldest initiative-his first toy store targeting a mainstream audience, in a suburban Phoenix mall. It's a plan he may someday expand to cities across the nation.

"We're building the model here, so if we need to, we can replicate it 200 times," McFarlane says.

It's a bold-sounding proposition. But it's really not much different from the approach McFarlane took when he left Marvel to start his own comic line.